“Tape-music composer Lionel Marchetti seems to be most comfortable when creating short works. To his credit are two 3” mini-CDs (on the Metamkine label), one split CD with RLW (on Selektion), only one full-length album (on Intransitive), and now, a brief 28-minute work. It is far different from the complex tape-splicing Marchetti has become known for, a rather more sedate and deliberately paced collage made from footsteps walking through wet snow, metallic clanking (perhaps of hiking equipment?), and occasional voices murmuring or calling to each other. The events within the piece are small ones, and an understated calm prevails as the overriding mood of this trip up Mont-blanc to le Glacier de Tre la Tete in France. One steady tone modulates quietly behind the main events, a musical ground to offset the concrete documentary aspects of the piece. These finally come to the fore for a beautiful finale of long high tones; an airplane flies overhead, and we arrive at the top of the mountain. The duration is an excellent compositional decision, concisely implying (rather than demonstrating) distance and remoteness." Howard Stelzer

“Some of the best concrete, environmental works you could hear, weaved location recordings I guess from the Alps, adorned with sound sources that come from far away to the left or right occasionally. You are always travelling, there’s always movement, seamlessly, calmly, not sudden switches of environment, but a steady flow of change and new characterization. I like the use of one time sounds that don’t get repeated. You want to click back and hear it again but then some other current scenario is making your mind work by then. These works are great, not since some of the best Eric La Casa or the Liminality comp have I been transported so completely. The wind, the crunch of snow underfoot, the bent branches left behind, the far away hail of a fellow trekker.” Manifold Records

Lionel Marchetti has blended field recordings with electronic drones and other sounds to create an incredibly dramatic recording. Recorded on the Glacier de Tré-la tête on Mont-Blanc, in France, at an altitude of 2173 meters we hear low rumbles, creaking, water splashing and sounds of footsteps crunching the icy surface all appearing out of the silence. Voices in the distance…a small propeller rescue plane overhead?

Portrait d’un Glacier is a Series I release which puts it in Ground Faults quiet category. While most of the CD is relatively quiet, there are moments at the middle of the CD where things get a little nerve wracking. It’s very cold, dark and dramatic.

This is one of those CDs that is great to drift asleep to in a darkened room only to be awaken by the sudden “events” that occasionally happen.

“I used to hike mountains, (the Alps), and the first time I descovered the Glacier “Tré-la tête”, on Mont-Blanc, in France, with my friend Bruno Roche, I realized that we met a strange “vivacity”. This glacier is coverd with stones, on 5 “kilometres” at less. It’s a sort of desert where it’s possible to see, on the floor, near our feet, a strange blue eye looking at us, saying : – do you want to know more about my face ?"…

In “Portrait d’un glacier (Alpes, 2173m)”, I tried to find beauty of the mountain when it is abble to give us an incredible geomorphic entity as the glacier ; I tried to represent the breath of who is walking in a such beauty, dealing, in that way, with more than only his human condition – “the most difficult area” – ; but with not forgetting this idea of “panic” i can feel when mountain is danger too, archaicism i can feel under my feet, and sometimes should distruct me only with a breath…" LM